Today as we look back on the events leading up to American independence, it’s easy to say which side you would have been on. Winning has a way of doing that. But if you were alive in the fall of 1775, things weren’t as clear.

Gen. George Washington had spent the last five months trying to mold the New England militia into an army, at the same time keeping the British under siege in Boston.

Benjamin Thompson, a New Hampshire officer, wrote evaluating the condition of Washington’s army on Nov.